In some situations, background noise (ambient noise) may interfere with a user's viewing experience when viewing and listening to a presented media content event. When the background noise level in the immediate vicinity of the user becomes too high, the user may not be able to discern the audio content portion of the presented media content event.
For example, the user may be viewing a particular media content event, such as a movie, serial program, sporting event, news broadcast, or the like, on their media entertainment system. The video content portion of the media content event is presented on a suitable display, monitor, television (TV) or the like. The audio content portion of the media content event is presented by a sound system and/or speakers of the TV, for example.
A hypothetical situation of an example loud background noise may be a noisy construction project that is underway in the vicinity of their media room where the user is attempting to view and listen to the media content event. From time to time, the outside noise level from the construction project may be significantly loud such that the background noise level in the immediate vicinity of the user (due to the construction noise) interferes with the presentation of the audio portion of the media content event. That is, the background noise may impair the user's ability to discern the dialogue of the audio content, and/or may become a distraction to the user's enjoyment.
Legacy media content presentation systems, such as the system disclosed in EP 1816860A1 (incorporated by reference herein in its entirety), detects such distracting and interfering background noise levels. The detected level of the background noise is then compared to the output audio volume of the presented media content event. When the detected background noise level increases above a threshold with respect to the output audio volume, or when the ratio of the background noise level to audio volume level exceeds some threshold, a textual description of the audio content is presented to the user concurrently with presentation of the video content.
Although such legacy systems provide some level of improvement to the user's experience when background noise levels increase to a level that interferes with the user's listening (thereby then presenting text corresponding to the audio content which the user may then read), such systems only marginally improve the user's experience.
Accordingly, there is a need in the arts to further improve legacy systems that merely compare the background noise level in the vicinity of the user with the output audio volume, and then simply present text corresponding to the dialogue of the audio content when the background noise level becomes too high.